Every time Alston publishes a video about affiliate marketing, the same question floods the comments: what is the best affiliate program? The answer is almost always the same. Digital products. Not because they are trendy, but because the math is completely different from what you see with physical products. Promote something on Amazon and you are looking at maybe a 5% commission after the company covers shipping, storage, and delivery overhead. Promote a digital product and you can earn 40%, 50%, or even 100 to 120% of the product price in the first month or two, because there is no box to pack and no warehouse to pay for.
In this video, Alston walks through 10 digital product affiliate programs he actually recommends, from his own software to a travel booking tool that pays 50% per sale. This post covers every program in the same order so you can compare commissions, understand who each product is right for, and figure out where to start without spending six months testing the wrong things.
What You’ll Walk Out With
- Why digital products pay 8 to 10 times more per sale than most physical product programs
- How a two-tier affiliate structure lets you earn commissions on what your referrals bring in
- High-ticket programs paying $500 or more per closed sale
- Recurring commission programs that keep paying long after the first promotion
- The best option for travel content creators paying 50% per booking
- The keyword and traffic tool that pays $200 per subscription and targets bloggers directly
- How to match each program to your actual audience so the pitch feels natural
- Not sure which income stream fits your background? Find out at finder.platformproof.com
Why Digital Products Change the Commission Math
Before getting into the list, it helps to understand why digital products consistently pay more. When a company sells a physical product, there are real costs attached to every sale: manufacturing, warehousing, shipping, and returns. Those costs eat into the margin, which is why affiliate commissions for physical goods tend to stay low. Amazon, one of the most-promoted retailers in affiliate marketing, pays around 5% on most categories.
Digital products have almost no marginal cost per sale. Once a course is recorded or a software platform is built, delivering it to one more customer costs almost nothing. That means companies can afford to give affiliates a much larger share of the revenue. You also get instant deliverability on your end. No waiting on shipping confirmation emails or dealing with customers asking where their package is. The product lands in their inbox immediately, which makes refund rates lower and customer satisfaction easier to maintain.
The other major advantage is recurring income. When you promote a software as a service product, your commission does not stop at the first payment. As long as the customer keeps their subscription, you keep earning. Alston points this out with every program on the list: once someone builds their business on a platform, they almost never leave. That stickiness is what makes digital product affiliate marketing such a strong long-term play.
Program 1: G Bolt Systems (Two-Tier, Up to 45% Recurring)
Alston leads with full disclosure: G Bolt Systems is his own company. He lists it first not to push his own product, but because he built it specifically with affiliates in mind and the structure is genuinely different from most programs on the market.
On the first tier, anyone you bring in directly earns you a 40% recurring commission. You promote the product once, the customer signs up, and you get paid every single month they stay active. But the two-tier structure is what separates G Bolt Systems from most programs. When one of your first-level affiliates brings someone in, you earn an additional 5% recurring commission on that sale too. You are capped at two tiers, so there is no pyramid structure involved, but the math means you can earn up to 45% combined recurring commissions from a single referral relationship that multiplies over time.
The platform is built to help people start and grow an online business, so the audience fit is anyone exploring digital entrepreneurship. If you already talk about online income, side hustles, or building a business from scratch, this program fits naturally into content you are already making. Details are in the first link of the video description.
Program 2: Legendary Marketer (From $7 Entry to $1,000 High Ticket)
Alston promoted Legendary Marketer two or three years before this video and still recommends it because of the range of products inside the program. Legendary Marketer is an online course platform focused on teaching digital entrepreneurship, and the affiliate structure gives you multiple entry points to earn.
At the low end, there is a $7 introductory course where affiliates earn around 40% of that sale. That commission is small on its own, but it gets customers into the Legendary Marketer funnel, and Legendary does the follow-up work from there. At the high end, when a customer purchases their premium coaching program, the affiliate commission can reach $1,000 per sale. There is also a recurring component as customers stay engaged with the platform over time.
The key selling point here is that you just need to get people in through the front door. You do not have to close the high-ticket sale yourself. Legendary Marketer’s own sales team and follow-up sequences handle that, and you earn the commission when they do. That is a setup that works well for affiliates who are good at generating interest but do not want to run a personal sales process.
Program 3: ClickFunnels (Lifetime Commission, Multiple Price Points)
ClickFunnels is a software as a service platform that lets users build web pages, sell courses, run memberships, and host digital products. Alston likes it for affiliate marketing specifically because of the variety of products inside the platform and the lifetime commission structure.
When you refer someone to ClickFunnels, your commission does not expire after a set period. You earn on that customer for as long as they stay active, across low-ticket items like books, monthly memberships, and high-ticket coaching programs that ClickFunnels promotes to its own customers. You get someone through the front door, and ClickFunnels takes care of the upsell sequence from there.
The practical reason people stay on ClickFunnels is real. Once someone has built 20 or 30 landing pages inside the platform, the cost of migrating everything to a competitor is enormous. Alston mentions this about himself: he had built out a large library of pages and switching felt like more work than staying. That stickiness is good news for affiliates because it means the recurring commissions you earn today are likely to last for years, not just weeks.
Program 4: Kajabi (30% Lifetime Recurring)
Kajabi is an all-in-one platform for course creators, coaches, and digital product sellers. It handles course hosting, email marketing, digital downloads, physical product sales, coaching bookings, and podcast distribution all in one place. The affiliate commission is 30% recurring for the lifetime of the customer.
Kajabi’s pricing is on the higher end compared to basic course platforms because of how much functionality it packs in, which means 30% of a Kajabi subscription is meaningful monthly income. The audience for Kajabi promotions is course creators and coaches who are serious about building a business rather than just dipping a toe in. If your content speaks to that group, creators who have a skill to teach and want to monetize it, Kajabi is a natural fit.
The same stickiness principle applies here that Alston mentions throughout the list. When someone uploads their entire course library, builds their email sequences, and starts selling on Kajabi, they are not going to pick up and move unless their business completely fails. That means the affiliate commissions you earn from a single referral can continue for years after you made the original recommendation.
Program 5: WP Engine ($200 Per Sale, Premium Hosting)
WP Engine is a premium managed WordPress hosting platform. Alston positions it as the upgrade path for bloggers who have outgrown basic shared hosting. If someone is getting 100,000 page views per month, they start looking at WP Engine because it offers more security, better performance, and features that basic hosts like Bluehost cannot match at that traffic level.
The commission is $200 per sale. Unlike most of the other programs on this list, WP Engine does not offer a recurring component for affiliates. You earn the flat fee when someone signs up, and then you need to bring in new referrals to keep earning. That makes it more of a volume play compared to a platform like Kajabi or ClickFunnels where one good referral can pay out for years.
The best audience for WP Engine promotions is bloggers and content creators who are already getting meaningful traffic and starting to experience performance issues with their current host. They know what they need and are ready to pay for it, which makes the conversation much easier than trying to convince a beginner to spend more on hosting before they have proven their site gets visitors.
Program 6: Shopify ($150 Per Sale, E-Commerce Leader)
Shopify is the most widely recognized e-commerce platform on the market, and that brand name recognition is part of what makes it a reliable affiliate program. When you recommend Shopify to someone, you are not asking them to trust an unknown tool. They have already seen Shopify ads on TikTok, YouTube, and across social media. The trust is partially pre-built.
The affiliate commission is $150 per sale. Shopify offers a free trial to new users, which gives affiliates a low-friction entry point for their audience. Get someone into the trial, they build out their store, start seeing results, and the platform becomes central to their business. At that point leaving Shopify would mean rebuilding everything, so retention is naturally high even without recurring affiliate commissions on the back end.
Shopify is best positioned for audiences interested in dropshipping, selling physical products online, building a clothing brand, or setting up any kind of e-commerce operation. If your content already speaks to product-based businesses or people who want to sell something physical, this program slots in without any awkward pitch.
Program 7: Kinsta (Up to $500 Per Sale Plus Lifetime Recurring)
Kinsta is Alston’s top pick for premium hosting commissions because it combines both high-ticket payouts and lifetime recurring income in a single program. The commission goes up to $500 per sale, and unlike WP Engine, Kinsta also pays recurring commissions for the lifetime of the customer.
Kinsta competes directly with WP Engine at the premium end of the hosting market. It targets sites with hundreds of thousands of page views per month, small and medium-sized businesses that depend heavily on their web presence, and organizations that cannot afford downtime. These are customers with real budgets who are not going to cancel their hosting because of a price increase. Once a business has everything running stably on Kinsta, the cost of switching is the risk of downtime, which most businesses will not take unless something goes badly wrong.
The combination of a $500 upfront commission and lifetime recurring makes Kinsta the highest long-term value program on the hosting side of this list. If you have an audience of established bloggers, agency owners, or business operators who run high-traffic websites, Kinsta is worth featuring prominently in your recommendations.
Program 8: CheapFlights (Up to 50% Per Sale, Travel Niche)
CheapFlights is the one program on this list that sits entirely outside the business and marketing category, and Alston includes it specifically because of how well it serves travel content creators. People use CheapFlights to find and book flights, and the affiliate commission is up to 50% per sale.
The math Alston walks through: if someone books a $240 flight through your affiliate link, you earn $120 from that single transaction. Travel is one of those categories where people are always searching for a better price, which means there is constant organic demand for recommendations about where to find deals. You do not have to manufacture the problem for your audience, they already have it.
CheapFlights positions as an alternative to booking through sites like Booking.com or going directly to an airline. If your content touches on travel at all, whether you cover budget travel, digital nomad life, travel hacking, or international remote work, this program gives you a way to monetize that audience with a commission structure that is hard to beat in the travel category.
Program 9: SEMrush ($200 Per Subscription)
SEMrush is an all-in-one marketing platform that bloggers and online business owners use to track their website traffic, research keywords, monitor competitor rankings, and audit their SEO performance. The affiliate commission is $200 per subscription.
The audience for SEMrush promotions is anyone building a content-driven online business. Bloggers who want to know which keywords are worth targeting, entrepreneurs who want to monitor whether their site traffic is growing, and agencies managing multiple client sites all have a genuine use for SEMrush. The platform has enough features that people who start using it seriously tend to keep their subscription because they rely on the data it provides.
$200 per subscription is a strong flat commission, and the target audience overlaps significantly with anyone following content about making money online. If your readers are trying to build a blog or grow an online presence, recommending the tool they need to track their progress is a natural addition to your content strategy rather than a detour into something unrelated.
Program 10: Flywheel (Up to $500 Per Referral, Reseller Option)
Flywheel is a managed WordPress hosting platform that structures its pricing differently from most competitors. Rather than charging based on storage space, Flywheel charges based on site traffic. That means a new site with very little traffic starts at a low cost, but as the site grows and pulls in more visitors, the subscription price increases with it. Affiliates earn up to $500 per referral.
What makes Flywheel stand out is the reseller hosting option. Flywheel lets agencies and freelancers buy hosting in bulk and resell it to their own clients at a markup. If your audience includes web designers, developers, or digital marketing agencies managing sites for other businesses, the reseller angle gives them a reason to sign up that goes beyond just needing hosting for themselves. They can make money from the platform while using it, which is a compelling pitch.
Between the $500 per referral commission and the reseller functionality, Flywheel is one of the more versatile hosting programs on the list. It works for audiences ranging from individual bloggers just starting out to agency owners looking to add a managed hosting component to their service offering.
Not sure which of these programs is the right starting point for you?
Answer a few questions about your background and goals and get a personalized recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.
How to Choose: A Simple Decision Framework
With 10 programs on the table, the practical question is which ones to actually promote. Trying to push all 10 at once leads to unfocused content that does not convert well. Here is a straightforward way to narrow it down.
Start with your audience’s primary goal. If they are trying to start an online business from scratch, G Bolt Systems, Legendary Marketer, and ClickFunnels are the most direct match. All three are built specifically for that audience, have strong brand recognition in the online business space, and offer either recurring income or high-ticket payouts that make your promotional effort worthwhile.
If your audience skews toward bloggers and content creators who already have some traffic but want to grow, WP Engine, Kinsta, and SEMrush are natural fits. These tools solve problems that are specific to people who already have a site running. Someone without a blog has no reason to pay for managed hosting or an SEO platform. Someone with a blog that is starting to take off has every reason to.
If your content covers e-commerce or product-based businesses, Shopify is the obvious anchor program, with Kajabi as a secondary option for anyone who sells courses or digital products rather than physical goods. And if travel is any part of what you cover, CheapFlights earns a permanent spot in your recommendations because the commission is strong and the audience demand is constant.
The last filter is commission structure. If you want income that compounds over time without constantly promoting new products, prioritize the recurring commission programs: G Bolt Systems, Legendary Marketer, ClickFunnels, Kajabi, and Kinsta. If you are in a higher-volume content operation and can drive consistent new traffic, the flat-fee programs like WP Engine, Shopify, and SEMrush work well because the payout per sale is significant enough to justify the effort on each one.
Honest Drawbacks to Know Before You Start
No affiliate program list is complete without acknowledging what can go wrong. A few things worth knowing before you commit time to promoting any of these.
High-ticket commissions require an audience that trusts you. Getting someone to click through to a $7 trial is easy. Getting them to eventually spend $1,000 on a coaching program based on your recommendation requires a real relationship. If you are just starting out, focus on the lower-barrier entry points first and build trust before leaning into the high-ticket angle.
Recurring commissions take time to add up. Earning 40% of a software subscription is genuinely valuable, but if the subscription is $50 per month, you are making $20 per active customer. That number matters a lot when you have 100 active referrals. It feels slow when you have five. Set expectations for yourself about the time horizon before these programs generate income you can depend on.
Programs without recurring commissions require consistent new traffic. WP Engine pays $200 per sale and nothing more after that. If your traffic stalls, your income from that program stalls with it. Balance your portfolio between recurring programs that build a floor and flat-fee programs that respond to spikes in traffic.
Promote what you can honestly recommend. Alston discloses that G Bolt Systems is his own company and that he promoted Legendary Marketer two to three years ago. That kind of transparency matters. An audience that trusts you will follow your recommendations. An audience that feels sold to will stop listening. Only promote programs you have used or genuinely believe in, and say so clearly when you have a financial interest in the recommendation.
Find Your Starting Point
Ten programs covering software, hosting, e-commerce, travel, and online education. The range exists because different audiences need different solutions. The fastest path forward is picking two or three programs that genuinely fit the people you are already talking to and going deep on those before spreading further.
If you are not sure which programs match your background and goals, use the Platform Proof Finder to get a straight answer. It takes a few minutes and points you toward the income streams that fit what you already know. Visit finder.platformproof.com to get started.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a digital product affiliate program?
A digital product affiliate program pays you a commission for referring customers to a product that is delivered digitally rather than physically. This includes software subscriptions, online courses, ebooks, memberships, and SaaS tools. Because there is no manufacturing or shipping cost, companies can afford to pay significantly higher commissions than physical product retailers typically offer.
Why are digital product commissions so much higher than Amazon?
Amazon sells physical goods that require warehousing, packing, shipping, and returns processing. All of those costs eat into the margin before the affiliate gets a cut. Digital products have almost no marginal delivery cost, so the company keeps more of the revenue and can share a larger percentage with affiliates. That is why you see 40% or 50% commissions on software while Amazon pays around 5% on most product categories.
What does recurring commission mean in affiliate marketing?
A recurring commission means you earn money every time your referred customer pays their subscription fee, not just on the first sale. If you refer someone to a software platform that charges $100 per month and your commission is 40%, you earn $40 every month that person remains a customer. Over a year that is $480 from a single referral, from a promotion you did once.
What is considered high-ticket in affiliate marketing?
Alston defines high ticket as any commission of $500 or more per sale. That can come from a high-priced product with a moderate commission rate, like a $2,500 coaching program paying 40%, or from a more affordable product with an exceptional commission rate. Programs like Kinsta and Flywheel reach high-ticket territory with their maximum per-referral payouts even though their underlying subscriptions are not at the luxury price point.
Is a two-tier affiliate program the same as a pyramid scheme?
No. A two-tier affiliate program pays you a small percentage on sales made by the affiliates you recruit. The tiers are capped, typically at two levels, and all income is tied to real product sales. A pyramid scheme generates income primarily from recruiting rather than from selling products. G Bolt Systems, for example, caps at two tiers and all commissions come from actual software subscriptions, not from simply signing people up as affiliates.
Do I need a large audience to make affiliate marketing work?
Not necessarily. A small, highly targeted audience that trusts your recommendations will convert at a much higher rate than a large audience that is barely paying attention. Many affiliate marketers earn meaningful income from a few hundred engaged followers by focusing on programs that match their audience’s specific needs. High-ticket and recurring programs especially reward conversion rate over raw volume.
What is the difference between WP Engine and Kinsta?
Both are premium managed WordPress hosting platforms targeting high-traffic websites. The main affiliate difference is commission structure. WP Engine pays a flat $200 per sale with no recurring component. Kinsta pays up to $500 per sale and also offers lifetime recurring commissions. For affiliates focused on long-term passive income, Kinsta’s structure is more favorable. For affiliates running high-volume traffic campaigns, WP Engine’s reliable flat fee can work well too.
Which program is best if my audience is interested in travel?
CheapFlights is the strongest option for a travel-focused audience. It pays up to 50% per booking, which can mean $120 or more from a single flight referral. Travel audiences are already actively searching for deals, so the recommendation fits naturally into content about destinations, budget travel tips, or digital nomad life without requiring any convincing about why they would want cheaper flights. The demand is built in.
Read Next
Affiliate marketing gets even more powerful when you can drive traffic to your links without paying for ads. If you want to see how that works in practice, Alston covers a strategy for generating affiliate commissions within 24 hours using Google Ads as a traffic source.
Read: How To Make Money in 24 Hours With Affiliate Marketing And Google Ads
Sources
- G Bolt Systems affiliate program details as described by Alston Godbolt in the source video
- Legendary Marketer affiliate program structure as described in the source video
- ClickFunnels affiliate program details as described in the source video
- Kajabi affiliate program: 30% lifetime recurring, as described in the source video
- WP Engine affiliate commission: $200 per sale, as described in the source video
- Shopify affiliate commission: $150 per sale, as described in the source video
- Kinsta affiliate commission: up to $500 per sale plus lifetime recurring, as described in the source video
- CheapFlights affiliate commission: up to 50% per sale, as described in the source video
- SEMrush affiliate commission: $200 per subscription, as described in the source video
- Flywheel affiliate commission: up to $500 per referral, as described in the source video
Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.